In the news this week it was hard to miss Google’s upgrade of AdSense for smartphones. It’s good to see this broadening of the reach of search ads. We always knew mobile was an emerging platform, and as a leader in the space, Google is a natural to be making these steps. The upgrade means Google’s ads are now inserted, alongside search results, into the iPhone Maps application. Publishers can also show much larger ads on their mobile sites to visitors with smartphones. Although the screen sizes are larger, the ads will most likely take up a large amount of space on the 2”x 3”-sized screen.

As mentioned in this SearchInsider article, mobile advertising may have its breakout year sooner rather than later as Google and MSN both report similar search experiences on mobile to that of the desktop. Obviously personal phone devices will become more ingrained in our lives to the point where it won’t only be a phone+camera but also wallet, computer, GPS, organizer and keys. With this kind of dependence, online ads will likely gain more exposure to the user than on the computer.

“Oh an yea, I know the image us a super old phone, but it gets the point across right?”